When i was a kid, our family moved to and lived in South America for a number of years.  There, the primary source of “kid’s” entertainment on television were a wide variety of Japanese TV shows.  Whether cartoon or live action, the predominate “boy” shows featured a wide assortment of robots battling other robots and heroes who piloted said vehicles.

By the time we left South America I was burned out by the whole thing.  I was surprised to find that when I arrived in the United States, the whole Japanese manga movement was only just beginning, so what was old hat to me was something new and fascinating to American audiences.

Years passed and today, the Japanese sci-fi market in all its various incarnations is pretty well known and, of course, extends well beyond the giant fighting robot genre.

Still, that’s the particular genre I’ve most remembered from my youth.  I believe the first Americanized version of this particular genre could be found in the low budget 1989 release Robot Jox.

Watching that trailer above, its interesting to see how as much as things change, they manage to stay the same.

Pacific Rim, director/co-writer Guillermo Del Toro’s love letter to this genre, is a perfectly good action/adventure film featuring giant robots and the monsters they fight.  The plot is very simple: A strange undersea rift has appeared and is spitting out giant sized monsters that, natch, attack the coastal cities of Earth.  Humanity unites to fight the menace and ultimately creates a squad of giant robots piloted by two people who are mentally “linked” together to do the job.  But the menace grows greater as stronger and more fearsome monsters appear, and a mystery develops regarding their origins…and purpose.

I had a perfectly good time watching Pacific Rim.  No, the film won’t earn awards for Shakespearean levels of acting or for the screenplay’s subtlety or depth.

This is nothing more and nothing less than a fun popcorn film.

Strangely, the film nonetheless managed to divide audiences quite a bit.  A friend of mine stated he tried to see the film a couple of times but could not get past the first twenty minutes.  Others have pointed a plot holes they felt critically wounded the movie’s story.

I dunno.

We are talking about a world where giant robots sucker punching giant monsters are a more effective way of dealing with said menaces versus nerve gas or missiles or nukes or any other form of projectiles.

In other words, if you’re willing to sit back and let the movie flow, I suspect you’ll have a good time.

For those looking for something more “logical”, then perhaps you should stick with action movies that have that…say, Skyfall or The Avengers?

Recommended.